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A History of the Internet and the Digital Future
Interesting new book about The Internet:
- A History of the Internet and the Digital Future, by Johnny Ryan. A History of the Internet and the Digital Future tells the story of the development of the Internet from the 1950s to the present, and examines how the balance of power has shifted between the individual and the state in the areas of censorship, copyright infringement, intellectual freedom and terrorism and warfare. Johnny Ryan explains how the Internet has revolutionized political campaigns; how the development of the World Wide Web enfranchised a new online population of assertive, niche consumers; and how the dot-com bust taught smarter firms to capitalize on the power of digital artisans. In the coming years, platforms such as the iPhone and Android rise or fall depending on their treading the line between proprietary control and open innovation. The trends of the past may hold out hope for the record and newspaper industry. From the government-controlled systems of the ColdWar to today’s move towards cloud computing, user-driven content and the new global commons, this book reveals the trends that are shaping the businesses, politics, and media of the digital future.
- How the atom bomb helped give birth to the Internet, By Johnny Ryan, ars technica. Ars Technica is proud to present three chapters from the book, condensed and adapted for our readers. This first installment is adapted from Chapter 1, "A Concept Born in the Shadow of the Nuke," and it looks at the role that the prospect of nuclear war played in the technical and policy decisions that gave rise to the Internet.
Commerce Department unveils a national broadband inventory map
The National Broadband Map is a tool to search, analyze and map broadband availability across the United States. Created and maintained by the NTIA, in collaboration with the FCC, and in partnership with 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia. See also: Are You Being Served? National Broadband Map Going Live Today, By Chloe Albanesius, PC Magazine (February 17, 2011).
Users can search by address, view data on a map, or use other interactive tools to compare broadband across various geographies, such as states, counties or congressional districts. ..."The National Broadband Map shows there are still too many people and community institutions lacking the level of broadband service needed to fully participate in the Internet economy. We are pleased to see the increase in broadband adoption last year, particularly in light of the difficult economic environment, but a digital divide remains," [Larry] Strickling [assistant secretary of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)] said in a statement.Continue reading
Conference: Common purpose for journalists and librarians
Beyond Books: News, Literacy, Democracy and Americas Libraries (BiblioNews) is a one-and-one-half-day convening April 6-7, 2011 at MIT in Cambridge, Mass., for journalists, librarians and citizens. This looks to be a really interesting conference! Please let us know if you are going and can blog about the event here. (Send mail to freegovinfo at gmail dot com )
For three centuries, in American towns large and small, two institutions have uniquely marked a commitment to participatory democracy, learning and open inquiry -- our libraries and our free press. Today, as their tools change, their common missions of civic engagement and information transparency converge. Economic and technology changes suggest an opportunity for collaboration among these two historic community information centers — one largely public, one largely private. How?Continue reading
The Googlization of Everything: Interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan
Siva Vaidhyanathan's new book, The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry), is out. He finds a lot to like about Google, but also raises lots of questions about it. Among other things, he proposes a sprawling effort by libraries and like-minded institutions that would essentially give Googlers a public option. He discusses his ideas in an interview in Inside Higher Ed.
- Google's Gadfly: new book explains how google has taken over knowledge and learning, interview of Siva Vaidhyanathan by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed (February 16, 2011)
[Google] has contributed to the steady commercialization of higher education and the erosion of standards of information quality. Google is not a problem because it allegedly weakens our faculties. It's a problem because Google bakes biases into its algorithms. And we fail to recognize that fact. Most of the recent changes in Google's search algorithms make Google much better for shopping and much worse for learning....The same service cannot serve wisdom and wealth equally well. Fundamentally, we must recognize that some things are too important to be entrusted to unaccountable private actors. The Human Knowledge Project would be a 50-year public, global plan to design, legislate for, enable, and fund a global digital library service to deliver the best information to the most people. It's as feasible as it is desirable. In other words, if we don't do it it's because we don't really want it.Continue reading
Interesting: Provenance of eBooks
This is a bit off-topic, but so interesting that I couldn't resist mentioning it. James Moushon did a little investigation into the absence of basic provenance information in eBooks and what he discovered was not encouraging. He discovered that almost none of the eBooks he examined had any indication of "where the book's content originated from or how we got to the digital format." He asks, rhetorically, how we will be able to accurately cite eBooks and differentiate between editions.
- eBook Publishers: Are eBook Copyright Pages Missing Information?, by James Moushon, The Self-Publishing Review (February 15, 2011). I picked 30 ebooks and analyzed their copyright pages. Somebody must have missed the memo about what information is required and what format it should be presented in because we had a variety of formats and information, to say the least. Although 30 ebooks is not a very big sample, only one of them came close to what is needed to ID the source.
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